"I would ask you to go and look at some of your data, just to compare first party performance over the course of this lifecycle, because I think our first party performance in terms of quality bars and units per title this shift has been superior to our competition's," said Durkin.

Important tool

"…we think first party is an important tool and you can't dispute titles like Forza, which has consistently come out on a repeated cadence and sold multi-million units," he added

"You can't dispute things like Fable, which again, on a very consistent pace, has come out and sold 2 and 3 million units a pop. And now new titles, like Kinect Sports, which has come out and sold over 3 million units.

"So we are, not only building existing IP and incubating around titles like Halo and others, but really building new IP in new areas. And that's going to be core to us... to build those experiences and monetize those."

You can't blame a Microsoft man for backing Microsoft products above those of its rivals, but Zelda and Wii Sports fans, and those of Gran Turismo and Uncharted, might beg to differ.

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Global Editor-in-Chief

Patrick (Twitter) is Global Editor-in-Chief for techradar, and has been with the site since its launch in 2008. He is a longstanding judge of the T3 Awards, been quoted or seen on everything from the The Sun to Sky News and is on the #CoolBrands Council. He started his career in football, making him one of approximately one journalists to have covered both a World Cup final and an iPhone launch.